Can you guess where we were? We have visited a secret garden on the rooftop of the 4th largest shopping mall in the world. We went there many times, and every time we won”t miss the chance to visit this garden, because it only opens on weekends. I guess most people who visit this shopping mall might not know that there is a beautiful garden above them, that is why it is called the Secret Garden.

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Our last update on this blog was 1 Jan this year and we has stopped blogging since then. Now it is back… …

Our blog was hacked in February, and we are still half way rebuilding its contents. Some older posts are still missing and we are actually redoing it bit by bit. I was able to restore the blog engine and theme in a short period of time, but putting back the contents takes time. With the new version of the blog engine, plugin and theme, I hope it won”t be hacked that easily again.

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The first half of 2013 has just gone, one of my most important goals this year is to finish my first Marathon in less than 6 hours qualifying time. I have done enough preparation but the event – KL marathon 2013 has been postponed to end of September due to the haze condition in June.

I had also set a goal to run at least 1000km as a total for this year and up until today, I have already completed 654.195km. (This morning I just had my usual Saturday long run of 22.5km).

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We are going to tell you and show you more photos of where we have been this year, and we promise you and ourselves that this blog will be more actively updated than the highest record which it has had before.

This is the first ray of sunlight in 2013 which came into our bathroom (in Ipoh’s home).

Happy New Year 2013! 😀 It is the 1st of January again.

It’s time to start a year again with new resolutions. “2012” has become the history, no matter how good or bad the year 2012 was, we should be looking forward to 2013.

What are your new year resolutions? My most challenging new year resolution is, I attempt to complete my first full Marathon within 6 hours. Planning has been done and training will start tomorrow after we are back to KL later. Today, SiewPeng and I need to continue to do house moving in Ipoh.

We didn’t update this blog frequently in 2012, now SiewPeng and I will try to update more. I have bought a new camera and taken quite a number of photos last year, it’s time to make full use of it and make this blog more interesting.

During one of our shopping trips (window shopping :D), we came across the giant water lily at 1Utama Shopping Mall.

We were attracted by the gigantic leaves of this water lily, which is called, Victoria amazonica. We have never seen such a big water lily leave before. It was a great eye-opener.

From the googling that we have done, these giant water lily leaves are capable of supporting a certain amount of weight. In other words, people can actually sit on them! I think they can support a child’s weight but I am not so sure about an adult.

However, we have seen an image on the Internet that depicts a lady sitting on a chair on a giant water lily leaf whilst playing a Chinese musical instrument called, ErHu!

There wasn’t a sign that forbids the visitors to be in contact with the plant. Although we did not try to sit on it but I did use my fingers to gently touch one of the leaves that was nearer to the edge of the pond and was conveniently reachable.

It felt like normal water lily leaves and when I tried to press it down but it wasn’t easy. These leaves are indeed quite strong.

We saw the buds of the water lily too but not a lot of flowers though. It was a fun and exciting experience. However, the opened space giant water lily pond has attracted rubbish disposal by some irresponsible parties.

I hope we can all do our part to preserve mother nature so that the next generation will still have a chance to see these magnificent views. Sometimes, the bins are just a few steps away or if the bin is full, we can hold on to the rubbish until we find another bin.

There is a bus stand next to this pond at a higher position, and we saw quite a number of people waiting for the bus there, we were guessing whether the empty bottles were thrown down by one of them.

Please don’t harm mother nature anymore just for the sake of your own convenience. Please think about your children the next time you throw another piece of rubbish on the ground. You are not only making this world a worse place for them but you are also a bad role model for them to follow. I would like to urge everyone to be more considerate and less selfish. Let’s play our part to protect the environment before everything is too late.

Following the Kaffir limes, here is another one of our ‘great’ discoveries. 😀 Yes! We found ourselves some sugar-apples! It has another common name, which is called sweet sop.

Well, we actually faced the same problem as we had with the Kaffir limes when it came to identify what they are, therefore, the label came in handy again during ‘difficult’ times like this! 😀

The first glance of the sugar-apple gives me the urge to relate it to mangosteen. I think maybe it is because of its colour. However, the skin of a sugar-apple looks like the flesh of a mangosteen. Do you agree with me?

According to the research that we have done, different cultures may have different names for it. But one of the names has drawn my attention. In Taiwan, they call it ShiJia (sakya), which means one cultivar resembles the top part of Sakyamuni’s (Buddha’s) head. Now that’s interesting!

This close-up looks like blueberry cheesecake with chocolate chips. What do you think?

After I’ve got to know sugar-apple, I remember that I have seen cookies made with them sold in a vegetarian restaurant. The cookies weren’t cheap though. I wonder if they are still selling it.

We did not try these sugar-apples but as their name implies, I can imagine that they are more likely to be much sweeter than normal apples. Let’s share with us if you have tried them before.

We put them in the fridge, which shouldn’t be done, according to my mom. Days later we gave them to her when we went to Ipoh in August.

Colin wanted to buy them just for photography purpose, because recently we always find different types of fruit in odd shapes.

We have always liked to venture out and increase our collection of special looking, weird, less common plants (for us) or any special vegetables. During one of our grocery shopping on a weekend, we found these little fellas.

Is it really less common? We are not sure, but this is the first time we saw it. May be we seldom never go to the wet market. Please tell us how common this fruit is to you.

Their skin looks rough and crumpled. We had no idea what they were at first sight until we looked at the label. It said, Limau Purut, which turns out to be Kaffir lime when we searched for it on the Internet.

Normally, limes come with rather smooth skin and round like oranges but a lot smaller and in green. These Kaffir limes are not exactly but almost the size of a small lemon. They neither have smooth skin or round. Their shapes are more towards oval. The only thing they have in common with normal limes is they are of the same colour, which is green.

The close-up of the inside of a Kaffir lime. The seed resembles lime seeds. However, from the look of it, the flesh feels like a pomelo’s. By looking at the Kaffir lime from this inner half, its outline projects quite an interesting pattern. If it was red or orange, it would look like fire. Can you imagine that? 😀

I am not sure if these limes are widely available but we got them from Tesco. We did not experience the taste of these limes. And they don’t have a strong smell. I think they should be sour. If you have tried them before, please share how it tasted and how it is usually used with us. Have a good day! 😀